How to help at home

How to help at home

Phonics

Talking about the sounds your child has learnt by looking through thier Phonics Book is a great way to help your child progress and apply their phonic knowledge. These sounds can be revisited and they could have a go at writing the letter again, they may well be very proud of how much their letter formation has improved! They could even attempt to write some words, captions or sentences at home. These could be brought in to school to share with the class as their ‘Magic Moment’.

A link to the Jolly Phonics songs we sing at school can be found below:

Reading

The most important thing you can do to help your child at home is to read, read and read! Reading every single day is so important and a great routine to get in to. It can be a lovely time to spend with your child, not only with their reading book but with story books from school or home. Please write in your child’s reading diary each day you read and if you can, include a brief comment.

Help your child to be as independent as possible – holding the book, turning the pages, pointing to the text and joining in with familiar phrases.

When sharing a story with your child you can model key skills which will support them in their learning. For example, finger pointing to the words, scanning from left to right, spotting tricky words and familiar sounds, picking up information from illustrations and making predictions.

Writing

Broadly speaking children apply their phonic knowledge in similar ways:

hearing and writing initial letter sounds in words

hearing and writing initial and final sounds

hearing sounds in the order they occur in words

building a memory of words off by heart – often ‘tricky’ words

You can support your child in their writing by encouraging them to listen to the sounds in words and write them down, they will hear more sounds in order as they become more confident.